


Bearing the Mark

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode Related, M/M, Pre-Slash, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: How might TS canon, in particular the events of Sentinel Too, play out in a world with soul mates and soul marks?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think this will probably be about three chapters - the first one here doing a bit of scene setting, the second more explicitly AU about the world building and Jim's thoughts on things, the third looking at how Sentinel Too plays out in this scenario. I don't anticipate this getting that long, but everything is subject to change, as per usual. (Added: and as per usual, things changed and this ended up 10,500 words of SenToo fixit. The story that grew....)

When Blair walked into that hospital room, he couldn’t help the speedy check of James Ellison’s impressively muscled body because if the universe was being kind one way it wasn’t completely impossible that it might be kind another. He was both thwarted and intrigued by the privacy band on the man’s wrist. Arm marks weren’t that common – only about five per cent of the population, and Blair’s heart jumped. It was stupid to assume that because Ellison was uncommon in one way that his test results meant what Blair was desperate for them to mean.

“Detective Ellison,” he began.

“I’m here looking for answers, not a match to my soul mark. So eyes here, Doctor,” the man said, with a double finger point at the eyes in his own face – eyes which were gloriously blue and coldly lit right now.

“Well, yes, of course. Answers. Yeah…” And Blair went into his spiel and found the flinty glare that was supposed to intimidate him actually strangely invigorating. God, if this man wasn’t a sentinel, he should be; Blair handed over his Rainier business card and made his escape, once he’d safely ditched the ‘borrowed’ lab coat and hospital ID. He almost capered with delight on the sidewalk outside; dignified it wasn’t, but Blair had sacrificed dignity to discovery before now and counted the cost worth paying. For a sentinel, he'd pay almost anything.

*** 

As corpses went, those of Dylan and Tommy Juno were… presentable. Not the worst that you could see. That didn’t encourage Blair to join Jim in the morgue, because he knew it was quite confirmed that they had two bodies, two dead hit men. Blair could loiter in an ante room and, while he waited, ponder Jim’s determination to see with his own eyes what everyone agreed was the case.

Jim didn’t take long. “They’re still dead?” Blair asked, a bad joke, but whatever, and then he changed tack at the look on Jim’s face. Maybe they hadn’t known each other too long but to Blair’s increasingly discerning eye, Jim looked unsettled. “I know they are actually dead but something’s wrong. What’s up?”

Jim shrugged. “Nothing important. Juno, Tommy, said something when we were on the phone. I wanted to check it out.”

“And?” Blair asked, with an exasperated spread of his hands.

“They were soul mates. Same mark.”

“Whoa! That’s not exactly common. But it sure as hell would have kept the deception going. Yes, your honour, I’m sure it was the man I was with, he has a star on his ass.”

“Yeah, that’s you, Sandburg, you straight away think about the sex side of things."

“But I’m right, though.”

“There are at least two times that testimony from his dates kept him out of trouble. You’re not wrong.”

Blair took a guess at what was bothering Jim. “It’s not something that we like to think about, is it? The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and stone cold killers have soul mates.”

“While the just wait all their lives sometimes.” Jim shook his head. “Well, they’re dead together.”

“And you killed them both.” Blair hadn’t meant to say that, but it tumbled out of him. He’d seen Jim use a gun before, but it was different when they were walking away from two dead men.

“I didn’t exactly have much choice,” Jim said tightly. “Or would you rather that Beverly Sanchez was dead along with Danny? Do you think Juno would have shown you any pity if he’d killed me first?”

“No, no. I get that, I really do.” Blair imagined himself stalked by an enraged Juno for his part in their attempted bait and switch. It raised ugly images that he speedily pushed aside. “You should tell me about Danny. We could find a bar, have a drink. If you wanted.”

“Come back to my place. I have some pretty decent beer, and a couple of photos of Danny and me back in the day.”

Blair nodded. He liked Jim’s home, its space and simplicity, and he liked the acceptance of his peace offering and the idea of sitting down with this man and finding out more about him and his past. For the dissertation, he told himself. And because maybe I’m starting to like Jim a little too much, he admitted as well.

***

He came out of the worst of his daze with a headache from hell and an awareness that was even more horrific. Lash was fumbling at his clothes, undoing buttons and zippers. Blair tried to struggle, to kick out, but he was caught in chains. Chains! What did Lash think he needed those for? 

“Come on, come on, where is it? Come to Papa,” Lash crooned and flipped Blair onto his belly with that terrifying strength that Blair had come to know far too well. His hands dragged at Blair’s jeans and underwear, and Blair choked out a noise of mingled denial and revulsion. “Eureka!” Lash declared, and his weight moved from Blair, who tried to struggle away. “Ah-ah-ah. Stay put.” He had a notebook and marker pen in his hand. He was, Blair realised, drawing Blair’s soul mark. 

“No! No way, man! Leave it alone!”

“I have to be you. How can I be you without this?” Lash’s hand prodded the mark on Blair’s hip and the flesh crept under his touch.

“No,” Blair said, and turned his head away. Lash finished his art, and put Blair’s clothing more or less in order. He left him then, and when he came back he wore Blair’s corduroy coat and he had Blair’s wolf drawn in black marker on his forehead. He hauled Blair on his shoulders and carried him to a room of nightmare intimacy – a comfortable chair (that Blair was chained in), candle light, and a select gathering of David Lash’s ‘friends’. Blair used the only weapon he had; words had power but they weren’t going to stop Lash. He fought on anyway.

And then Jim came, and Blair waited in drugged, woozy terror while Jim and Lash fought, listened to the crash of glass and broken wood, and flinched at the gunshots. He couldn’t help it; when Jim came back into that room with the keys to those disgusting chains, Blair began to cry.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jim said, and hauled Blair upright and hugged him. There was no better use for Blair’s newly freed hands than to wrap them around Jim and hold on.

“Blair. Sandburg. Listen. You with me?”

Probably not, Blair thought, but he nodded. Jim had an urgency to him that made Blair try to listen, to concentrate.

“I saw what he had on his face. I smeared it for you. I’ll tell Forensics, I’ll take any heat for interfering with evidence, but I’ll be surprised if it comes to that. Nobody else will see your mark that you don’t choose, okay?”

Blair nodded, and then laid his head down against Jim’s solid warmth once more. Safe. Oh god, safe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a roll here. Part three has many interesting concepts to it but rather less form so don't expect an update for a few days after this.

The ugly welts spread up and down Jim’s arm; Blair took one horrified look and hustled him into the bathroom.

“Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” he demanded.

“Because we couldn’t do anything in the car, and now we’re home I can damn well bathe my own arm.” Jim was clearly in pain, but he waited, unmoving, and it took Blair a moment to figure out what for.

“Oh, for…. I will turn my back while you take the privacy band off. God, Jim, I’ve seen everything else, I cover your sentinel ass at the PD….” Jim’s face remained stone, and Blair’s indignation ripped into shreds like a burst balloon. “I’ll get some oatmeal from the kitchen,” he said sullenly and left on the errand.

He knocked on the door before he came back in. Jim was hunched over the basin, running water from the faucet over his arm.

“You should have a proper bath, man. Oatmeal all the way. I’ll even clean it up for you if you want.” Greater love hath no man than to clean the bath for his friend, but this little episode had made a point to Blair. He was Jim’s observer, maybe not his friend at all, which stung. If he was simply an observer then he’d better earn his keep, hadn’t he?

“Sandburg.” It came out heavily. “My hands are kind of stiff. Can I get you to start the bath, and pour the oatmeal? Thanks.” Jim turned, his arm bare except for the marking of welts, and Blair hastily leaned over the bath, determined not to look. When he stood, however, it occurred to him that if Jim wasn’t covering his arm then that meant something – a gesture, and what if he rejected the gesture…. He’d thought they were friends, Jim probably did too; he just had a thing about being private about his mark. Plenty of people did.

“My mark’s on my right hip,” he said. But I guess you had a fifty/fifty chance of figuring that out by now. And courtesy of our old buddy Davy you know it’s a wolf, or maybe a wolf-like dog, you know, like a German Shepherd; it’s just a silhouette, but pretty clear.” Babbling again – he really needed to learn to shut up sometime and seized the moment to shut his damn mouth.

“Easily covered by underwear is always convenient,” Jim said into a pregnant silence. “Mine’s not a wolf.”

Blair took a deep breath and stood straight. Of course Jim wasn’t a match. He was just Blair’s friend, a good friend. That was all.

Jim extended his arm. The welts were ugly and looked miserably sore. There was no soul mark.

“What the hell!” Jim was not body-shy. He’d walked proudly out of that shower-room on Cyclops Oil’s rig and both Blair and Maggie had definitively seen that there was only one place that his soul mark could be, under a jury-rigged band on his wrist. But Jim’s wrist was bare. Adults had marks – they might come late, your match might be on the other side of the country or the world, might be fifty years apart from you in age, but everybody had a mark and a potential match and soulmate. 

Jim just jerked his head at the bath. “I think that needs some cold water.”

Blair swore under his breath and ran the cold. Water splattered into the bath while Jim drew his t-shirt over his head, hissing as he eased the sleeves off his arms. There were little red splotches that might turn into hives showing on his shoulders but Blair’s eyes were only for the arm that held no mark. Jim’s jealous guarding of the band made no sense whatsoever and Blair felt obscurely that some unfair, maybe even obscene, prank was being played. Just on whom, he couldn’t tell.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said to Jim’s bare arm.

“Really?” It was tired and deeply sardonic, and Blair’s head shot up so that he could look Jim in the face.

“No, not really. What the hell, Jim? What the hell. And I mean that pretty literally. What? How? Why? Actually, the why of the fake band is pretty clear because adults have soul marks and not having one is unheard of, and I’ve already seen how comfortable you are with being a little different from the average. This way you could fuck without awkward questions, right?”

Jim flinched, the tiniest involuntary movement that he almost managed to hide, and Blair’s face burned with shame. “And that’s why I’d be better off not saying anything. I should let you have your bath. That skin looks sore as hell. We can work this out later.” Jim looked no more convinced by the jerky excuses than Blair was, and Blair made to leave.

“I had a mark. It’s complicated.” Jim shrugged, and then winced in simple physical pain. “I’ll tell you after.” He gestured at the bath, and Blair nodded and fled.

It was getting dark outside and the lights of the city glowed across the bay. It was pretty. It should have been calming, but nothing was going to calm Blair down. He’d seen something incomprehensible. Complicated! Jim Ellison had a gift for understatement, he’d give him that.

He paced for a while, turning the puzzle over in his mind – ‘mine’s not a wolf’ Jim had said, as if there was something to see. ‘I had a mark’ was past tense, and made no more sense than anything else. An accident severe enough to have erased the mark from his skin would have caused terrible scarring, and Jim bore scars, yes, but nothing like that. Blair remembered a friend of his, who did have an arm mark. She’d been burned by hot fat as a child, but the mark sat on the stretched and damaged skin, pulled out of shape but perfectly recognisable. She’d had an intricate circular pattern reminiscent of a mandala. Damaged as it was, its match would still be unmistakable. Jim’s skin, however, was bare as a newborn’s.

No, not as bare as a newborn. Jim did carry scars. Blair knew that some religious cults demanded the effacement of your mark as a sign of loyalty. Destroying or defacing the mark had been used as punishment down the ages along with other barbaric practices. Was it something to do with the murkier portions of Jim’s military career? Blair seethed with impatient curiosity.

The sound of the unlatching of the bathroom door made Blair whirl like it had been unexpected thunder. Jim didn’t comment on Blair’s tension, but simply said, “I’ll get some clothes and we’ll talk.” The walk up the stairs, the quick change into clothes, and the return took too long, now that they’d come to the point, and not long enough. Jim had put on boxer shorts and a plain grey tank-top which showed that the skin irritation had reduced but not gone. He sat on the edge of one of the armchairs and said, “I’ve always thought there’s a lot of romantic bullshit around soul mates.”

Blair perched himself against the side of the sofa. “Human nature, I guess. Rituals and arbitrary expectations – we like to try and make rules and sense out of situations where those things don’t always apply.” He could be patient now that Jim had begun to talk – he could and he would let Jim spool this out in his own time, so long as Blair knew in the end.

“Arbitrary. Soul mates – yeah, I’ll grant that it looks like it’s a great thing from the inside of it, and I’ll grant that I’ve got issues – which I’ll get around to explaining.”

“But from the outside of it?”

“From the outside of it…I got my mark when I was sixteen. Average age, average place on the left hip just above my ass. Nothing special.”

Blair shook his head. “Nothing special… Jim, we’ve spent all of our history trying to figure this thing out. By definition all soul marks are special, whether or not you find your match.”

“How much more special than anything else? People aren’t meant to be perfect so why should relationships be? Why should having matching marks change anything or make people be different to what they are?"

“Marks don’t _make_ you do anything,” Blair protested. “But they are a signifier that another person is ideally suited to complement you in some way. To make you happy.”

“And I can’t figure out who makes me happy without some mystical stamp of destiny on our asses? I’ve had lovers, I have good friends. Carolyn and I didn’t make it, okay, fine, but she was worth loving. I don’t need a sign from heaven to tell me that you and I have a good thing between us.”

Blair ducked his head at that. “Thanks.” 

Jim paused a while, and Blair pondered him, wondering if that particular admission had exhausted Jim’s willingness to speak. A good thing; yes, it was, even though Blair wasn’t sure precisely what sort of thing it was.

“Did your mom leave your dad because she found her soul mate?”

Jim chuckled. “Am I that predictable?”

“It’s not unknown. People assume that they won’t meet their match and they accept that and get on with their lives – and then it all changes.”

“Yeah. It all changes and not everybody likes the changes.”

This part of it Blair could understand, a child’s grief and anger that his mother’s one in a hundred chance had left him bereft shaping an adult’s attitude. “Having no soul mark at all is quite a change too.”

“It was a thing in my unit. To have your mark removed to show loyalty to the group.” 

“Forcible removal of a soul mark is a human rights abuse.” It was a growl, deep and feral and furious.

“There was nothing forcible about it.”

Blair sprang up from the sofa, unable to sit still any longer. “Then your unit was fucked up. Way fucked up, and the sort of fucked up where the higher-ups chose to be blind because you clearly had some quality skin grafting done.” He dropped onto the sofa properly, almost overwhelmed with horror. In general conversation he would have agreed with Jim that there were too many romantic conventions, too many people trying to make sense out of soul mates and coming up with ideas that Blair thought foolish at best. But Jim’s flat statement raised hairs on the back of Blair’s neck. In some things, it seemed he was far more primitive than Jim ever could be. “Oh man, that is so fucked up,” he said again.

“Well, that’s me, Chief. Fucked up. An arrogant, self-destructive schmuck. You called it a while back now.”

“What was your mark? Were you allowed to keep any record?”

“No record, but I remember it well enough. It was a big cat. But it’s gone, and I’ve never seen anyone who shared it and it doesn’t matter if I never do. Most people don’t meet their matches, and life goes on.”

“There are registers now. Some of them are even going up on the internet. You were never tempted.”

Jim shook his head. “No. You?”

Blair squirmed. Some countries had up to fifteen percent of soul matches per capita because they’d kept records a long time. But the idea of having his mark or its description copied onto a microfiche or spreadsheet like his date of birth details only made him uncomfortable.

What if he did allow a record? Or what if he looked at other people’s? Somewhere out there was the one. The One, even, according to legend and song and blockbuster cinema. 

Blair looked across at Jim, who sat there without his privacy band in front of Blair for the first time ever. That One had better have room in their life for a fucked-up, mark-lost sentinel with ‘issues’ to burn, or they wouldn’t be worth a damn. Blair wasn't going to seek out his soul mate, but the idea of giving up his mark... that was an idea that would take a while to process. Did Jim ever regret his choice?

“No,” he said. “Maybe it is all about destiny and in that case I should let destiny play its part, right?”

Jim grinned at that, sinking back against his chair in relief that the ordeal of revelation was over. “That’ll be some destiny there, Chief, finding your perfect match. Someone who doesn’t mind all that hair in the drain. The weird food and music. The constant lecturing.”

“You’ve survived those things. Whatever makes my match is probably going to be a little more complicated than just toleration.”

Jim raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and acknowledgement. “I guess,” he said. He looked drained – by the hard day, by the vicious skin reaction, by the stress of revealing something that he’d probably never meant to reveal. But the smile he gave Blair was affectionate and Blair sat there a moment, basking in the warmth, and hoping that some of his own radiated to Jim.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those familiar with TS canon will know that SenToo is very much a story arc of two parts. More in part four once I figure it out a bit better. But now, here's part three. I had a lot of fun writing this, I hope that transfers to reading pleasure.

The woman sitting with Megan across the bullpen wore a sleeveless top, and Blair was torn between being riveted by their conversation and its implications, and the realisation that what he’d at first thought was a tattoo was actually a soul mark. Her personal style marked her as unafraid of boldness, and the visible soul mark absolutely confirmed it. It was a spotted jaguar’s head, marked out on her biceps in a design reminiscent of ancient South American art. Given that Blair had only recently been reading about archaeological studies in Mexico that might directly be tied to his research, it looked startlingly like destiny – not the soul mate sort of destiny, but sentinel destiny for sure.

Alex Barnes’s receptivity to his approach and his mentoring brightened a week that was increasingly marred by Jim’s temper and strange behaviour. Blair might joke about Jim being an evil stepfather in the PD, but it wasn’t that funny a joke. It all grew increasingly unfunny, until Alex’s appearance in his office with a gun became the punch line he could have lived without for all his life – which looked likely to be over soon.

The next thing he remembered in the waking world was choking and shivering with the dawn sun in his eyes, while the paramedics worked on him and the PD people stood and murmured around him until he was loaded into an ambulance. He caught one glimpse of Jim’s white, haggard face and he tried to lift his hand in reassurance before the doors shut out the world.

He had a very clear memory of what he experienced outside the waking world… or should that be inside the interior dream, he wondered and giggled like he was high.

“Blair?” the paramedic questioned.

“I’m fine,” was all he could say before he started coughing again. They put an oxygen mask on him while they drove him to the hospital, where they also gave him an MRI after discovering a lump under his hair. The headache and occasional confusion wasn’t just from shock and hypoxia; he had a mild concussion from a head blow as well.

Why hadn’t Alex shot him? It was too hard to think of, her steady hand and the regret that looked genuine but was worth nothing, and so instead Blair separated himself from the noise and discomfort of the scan with memories of the dream. A wolf and a black jaguar, Blair and Jim, and the joining in a burst of light. What a vision, what a glorious, beautiful trip – but one that Jim was reluctant to join him in.

It meant something, though, and Blair was going to find out what; maybe even before he stopped aching all over his body. Someone had done CPR on him and had even managed not to crack any ribs. Jim hadn’t discussed what happened when they found Blair, but Blair was certain it had been Jim’s touch on him. Pushing air into his lungs, blood through his body, calling Blair back from wherever you went when you died. Blair was going to find out what it meant if it killed him all over again.

“This is your waiver confirming you’re leaving AMA,” the nurse said, and pointed to the section where he had to sign. She looked genuinely concerned for him, but Blair couldn’t stay here any longer. “Also, since you’re doing paperwork I’ll let you know that you may need to check your official description of your soul mark in any records. It was wrong on your papers here.”

“Uh, okay, thanks.” Botched paper work was the least of Blair’s issues, just so long as they let him out the door so he could go home. Jim had very nearly ordered him back to the loft, or maybe it was some weird, authoritarian form of begging. Blair would always practice meek obedience if it got him what he wanted anyway. “I’ll worry about that later, I’m in sort of a hurry. My roommate is due to travel and I’m hoping to catch him before he leaves.”

The woman’s silence said as loud as words her opinion that the roommate should be coming to Blair rather than vice versa, but Blair knew Jim’s single-mindedness on a hunt, especially when that hunt would delay the reckoning of awkward conversation.

“If you’ll sit in the chair, please, Mr Sandburg.” He did so and was wheeled to the freedom of a taxi and home.

He took the elevator and he was still out of breath when he walked in the loft’s front door. There were boxes and the bags from the motel stacked by the door of his room, more boxes stacked inside. Well, they could wait. 

Noise from the bathroom confirmed Jim was taking a shower. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he called. “Sit down right now, Sandburg.” 

More orders. Blair might obey this one as well. It was more like three minutes but Jim was otherwise as good as his word, emerging from the bathroom with just a towel draped around him.

“You’re an idiot. They wanted to keep you under observation at least another day.” 

Blair smiled. Jim all grouchy with concern rather than sentinel weirdness was a blessed change. “So you overheard. But why bother? No sign of aspiration, the concussion will settle, and whoever did CPR only bruised me, no broken bones. I guess a delicate touch is good for all kinds of things, right?”

A twitch of Jim’s jaw was the only answer to that. “Simon’s got plane tickets organised – we’re out of Cascade early tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure that your bed’s set up before I go up tonight, and the rest of this,” – a shamed duck of the head tilted towards the boxes by the door of Blair’s room – “will have to wait. You do any of that yourself and I’ll kick your ass out a second time.”

“Big talk, man. Which, speaking seriously, we will absolutely have that when you get back. A long, serious talk.”

“But not tonight. There’s too much to do.”

“Yeah, so I’ve gathered.” Jim had crouched beside him, not subtle in his assessment of Blair’s well-being, maybe not even fully conscious of the attention that he was giving. Sentinels, Blair thought fondly, or maybe it was Jim Ellison. Alex certainly had upset a few theories, but Blair would think of that later. Jim stood, the towel loosening in his movement, and it began to slip. Blair almost joked ‘Whoops, no flashing, man’ but the lighthearted comment stuck in his throat. A rasped, “What the hell!” overtook it instead.

Jim turned towards him, questioning, but Blair shot up from the chair and hauled the towel down and nearly off. Jim made a startled noise and jerked it back around himself, but not before Blair had confirmed what he saw. Jim had no soul mark, hadn’t had one for nearly fifteen years, but there was a clear mark on his left hip. And not just any mark. He wore Blair’s wolf.

“What did you do?” Blair shouted. “What the hell did you do?”

“What? I didn’t do anything!” Jim protested.

“You’ve got my wolf. You’ve got my fucking mark!”

Jim backed away, clutching the towel like it was his only shield and protection.

“Settle down,” he said, raising one hand.

Blair was done obeying Jim right now. Instead he pushed at his shoulders and propelled Jim back into the bathroom. The mirror over the sink was too high to be useful but there was a round, steel framed travel mirror in one of the drawers. Blair took it out and thrust it at Jim. 

“Take a look! Take a good look, and then tell me what you think is going on.” His tone dropped into a deep, sarcastic growl. “I’ll be really interested in your hypothesis.”

Jim took the mirror like it was a loaded gun and Blair had ordered him to shoot himself. The towel was adjusted with unusual reserve, and he angled his head to take a look. “Jesus.”

“Oh, I _don’t_ think so.” The bathroom wasn’t big. Blair wasn’t a tall man, especially not next to Jim, but he felt big enough to fill this room, the whole apartment for that matter, with the power of emotions driving him right now. Bewilderment, complete and utter; wonder, and a tinge of fear; lastly, a not quite sane, increasingly ecstatic sense of possession. Yes! His sentinel! His goddamned sentinel, his Jim Ellison, his!

A small, niggling fear entered him. Yes, it was his mark, but in reverse image. Where Blair’s wolf looked to leap outwards from his right hip, Jim’s new mark was positioned to jump outwards from his left. Well, of course, that was only right and appropriate, Blair told himself. The marks would face together when he and Jim stood side by side. It was beautiful, a truth in image and metaphor. “Look,” he said, determined to share this new revelation with Jim, and hastily adjusted his clothes to reveal his own mark.

Jim’s eyes grew wide. He looked so shocked that Blair thought he might faint. When he dropped to his knees, for a moment Blair thought that he had. Jim laid his fingers gently on Blair’s skin. “Oh my god.”

“See,” Blair told him. “They face together, man. Almost like our vision.”

“Exactly like the vision, Blair.” With shaking hands, Jim handed Blair the mirror. Blair took it, beginning to share some of the chill from Jim’s shock, and examined his mark. Except not his mark. Where there had been the silhouette of a leaping wolf, now there was a big cat. It was in the same proportion and ‘style’ as his wolf, but it was undoubtedly a cat.

“Is this… is this your mark? The one they took away?”

Jim nodded, and said softly again, “Oh my god,” and laid his head against Blair’s hip like a man in prayer. His towel had finally fallen away, Blair’s pants and underwear were halfway down his legs, they were standing in Jim’s clean but utilitarian bathroom, and this was surely the most transcendent moment of Blair’s life. 

Transcendence was disturbed by Blair's realisation that he wanted to touch Jim but trying to turn and hug him was going to see him cracking his head on the toilet commode when his pants tripped him up.

“Hang on. Hang on, Jim,” he muttered, and disturbed Jim’s pose with awkwardly bending to drag his clothes back up. Jim’s serenity was broken and he stood, still naked, and looked at Blair with tears in his eyes.

“I… what the hell. But we’re not a match,” he said, and he sounded equal amounts heartbroken and confused.

Blair laughed outright. Not mockingly; he was overflowing with emotion, and delighted to allay Jim’s distress. “Oh, come on. You have my soul mark, I have yours. That makes us soul mates by any culture’s definition through the ages. I don’t care if it’s a sentinel thing, or an us thing, but it is _us_. Maybe it’s not the letter of the law but are you going to tell me it’s not the spirit? You’re mine. I’m yours, and we’re marked to show it. That’s all we need to know.”

Jim nodded at that, and took Blair’s face in his hand and bent to touch their foreheads together. “God, I am so glad,” he said. “So relieved.”

“I know what you mean,” Blair said, and then clutched at Jim’s wrists. “I, uh, I think I need to sit down. Like now.”

“Let’s get that done, Chief,” Jim said, and half carried, half steered him back to the living area, where Blair dropped onto the couch. He leaned back in exhaustion while Jim wrapped a blanket over him.

“You know,” Blair said, “I’m probably not the one who’s feeling cold here.”

Jim grinned at that, a broad, beautiful, smug expression. Oh god, they were probably both going to die of self-satisfaction. Maybe other things too, Blair thought, not too tired to take in the naked Jim Ellison view.

“I’ll get some clothes” he said, and not quite bounded up the stairs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a shorty chapter here. This is increasingly turning into yet another Sentoo Two fixit fic, and it would help if you're familiar with that story arc.

Blair sat in a happy daze while he waited for Jim. Jim came back in a simple t-shirt and sweat pants, and he sat next to Blair on the couch and looked at him a moment as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Then a shadow came over his face.

“We have crappy timing.”

“How?” And then Blair sat up straighter. “Alex. You still want to go after her.”

“She has the VX and I can’t bail on Simon at the last minute.” 

Blair gaped. “You’re kidding! Jim… we’ve just figured everything out, we are probably literally soul bonded, which is one of those mystical things that a lot of people think is a pretty metaphor, and you want to go chasing Alex Barnes?”

“No, I don’t want to. But it’s necessary.”

“Yes, yes you do want to.”

“I’m a cop.” Jim clapped one hand around Blair’s upper arm, as if he thought Blair might run. “And she killed you. She killed you and if it wasn’t for what we have, you would have stayed dead, and I would have killed her for it.”

“Hey, hey. That doesn’t mean you get to go all eye for an eye.”

Jim’s teeth bared in a snarl as much as a grin. “That’s unexpectedly forgiving of you.”

“Forgiveness doesn’t come into it, not now, and maybe not ever. But I care what happens to you, and the only leeway being soul mates would give us is that they might let us have a little privacy when I visit you in jail.”

“I plan on an arrest. And if you’re worried about my self-control, I will have Simon with me.”

“You’ll have me too.”

Jim reared back as if Blair had spat at him. “No.” Blair opened his mouth to speak and Jim thundered out “No!” and then stood, looming over Blair. “You nearly drowned not even two full days ago. You are out of the hospital AMA, and you think you’re traipsing off to Mexico? Think again, Sandburg. You’re staying in Cascade and you’re giving yourself time to heal.”

“I’m your back-up. I’m your soul mate, damn it. I’m allowed to be with you! What the hell is the point of this if I’m not allowed to be with you?” It would have more force if only Blair could stand but some fumbling movements confirmed that the blanket was tangled.

“This isn’t a question of being allowed. You’ve been badly hurt, you get tired too easily, you still ache. Letting you come is not taking care of you, it’s putting you in harm’s way with a woman who’s already done you a lot of harm.” Jim sat down again and took Blair’s hand in a hard, fierce grip. “I will come back to you. It’s not as if I could stay away. I’ll see that bitch in jail and I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

“I shouldn’t have to need a promise. Jim, come on!” Angry impulse blurted out, “You can’t stop me from following you.”

“Maybe I can’t but what I can stop is the two of us arguing with each other and saying something we don’t mean.” Jim rose. “My bag is packed anyway. There’ll be an airport hotel I can stay at tonight before Simon and I fly out.”

Blair sat frozen. If you’d asked him the culmination of discovering his soul mate, said soul mate spending the night in a hotel after a fight wouldn’t have been his first pick.

“You said you’d set up the futon for me before you went,” he said, through a suddenly dry throat.

“I don’t need to. You can sleep upstairs.”

“Then stay with me here tonight.”

“No. I can’t stay here or else I won’t leave at all.”

“Like I’d have a problem with that. There are other cops out there.”

“Damn it, Chief, I don’t get it myself. I’ve been crazy since she came to Cascade, and I’m pretty sure I’m crazy now, but I have got to do this. She’s like me but she’s gone wrong somewhere. Surely it makes sense that another sentinel has to catch her.”

“With help,” Blair said pointedly.

“I’ll have Simon,” was the equally pointed response. Blair hung his head. It was despondency, but it was also the dawning of an idea that he wanted to hide.

“Don’t look so worried. I’m coming back, Blair.” Blair didn’t look up, and Jim said, hesitantly, “You’ll still be here?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Blair said. He looked Jim in the face and shook his shoulders for the emphasis due an answer to such a ridiculous question. “There are no take backs and no do-overs for this thing. Long term you and I are going to be wherever the other is. I just wish we had our shit together for the short term.”

“I know it’s crazy, but it’s a sentinel thing. I feel it.”

“That’s supposed to convince me, is it?”

Jim turned away, offense clearly in his face. “I’ll get my bag. I need to get changed too.” He did so, and came down to find Blair waiting for him by the door.

“Well. I guess you’d better go do that sentinel thing.” Jim nodded, and stood still a moment, looking for good-bye words. He put the bag down, and a look came into his face that made Blair’s heart leap and made him half regret his temper and disappointment. Blair thought that Jim might kiss him, but instead Jim took both Blair’s hands in his and pressed them against his chest. “Enjoy that nice big cold hotel bed, man,” Blair said. “Think about what’s waiting when you get back.”

“Damn it, you never give up, do you.” But Blair had been only a little snide, and Jim was only a little irritated. He did kiss Blair then, a quick brush of lips to his temple, before he let go of Blair’s hands and picked up his bag and keys and left.

Blair stood there a moment, still with the touch of Jim’s lips against his skin and the heat of Jim’s hands on his, and then he went to the phone. It was getting late in the evening, but he was answered quickly enough.

“Hey, Megan, it’s Blair. We need to talk.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said three parts originally didn't I? Ahahaha etc etc.  
> I've borrowed and rearranged the events and some of the dialogue of the actual episode Sentinel Too part 2 here. Here's a link for anyone unfamiliar or wanting to jog their memory:  
> http://www.kelesa.net/transcripts/trans-ep58.htm

The rooms of the hotel were shady but still warm and humid. Especially humid, and Blair struggled for breath now and again while they loitered, watching for either Jim or Simon.

Megan looked at him with increasing concern before she grabbed his hand and said, “Reception said that Jim’s room was number twenty-one, right?” She hauled him out of his uncomfortable chair and dragged him with her in a business-like manner.

“Megan, what…”

“You need to rest a bit. You also need to not miss Jim. And I have a solution.” She let go of Blair and rummaged in her purse, which looked expensively made and extensive in its capacity, and removed a rectangular piece of plastic.

“These locks are cheap as, so let’s just try this. Keep an eye out, will you?” she told Blair and knelt to begin fiddling with the door, the door handle and the plastic. A small satisfied noise signified her success, and Blair and she slipped into Jim’s room and shut the door behind them.

“So…” Blair teased. “A misspent youth or special Aussie police training?”

“Oh, I’m sure you can figure that out for yourself,” Megan said smugly. “Sit down, Sandy, you look exhausted.”

Blair nodded, and sat down on the side of Jim’s bed. And then he leaned back to half lie on it, desperately tired as he was, and then he almost certainly fell asleep, to be awakened by his soul mate kicking open the door with a gun in his hands. He was then unceremoniously dragged by the hand for the second time in a matter of hours, by Jim this time, to the outdoor seating of a pleasant looking bar. He ordered himself bottled water, and sat there trading looks with Jim – what the hell, Sandburg? – it’s not like I didn’t tell you I’d do this, Jim – I swear I will kill you – I don’t think so. And so on, while Simon rebuked Megan and Blair for their presence, but got down to the nitty-gritty of the case anyway. 

Discovering that Alex had killed Hettinger put a chill through Blair that all the hot sun beating down on him couldn’t dispel. “I guess she remembered to be thorough, this time,” he said.

“It was personal with Hettinger. I suspect that makes a difference for Alex,” Jim said.

“So long as it doesn’t make a difference for you,” Simon said, and Blair smiled at that. Jim had been right that Simon would try to keep him in check. But then Simon turned his attention to Blair. “Connor here may have ‘authorisation’ from her superiors”–and even for Simon that was a master class in sarcasm–“but you’re a serious distraction for Jim, and for me. I’m mightily inclined to pull rank with the local authorities and kick your ass back to Cascade.”

“Simon, no!” It was the same denial coming out of two mouths, Jim’s as well as Blair’s. Blair looked at Jim across the table, crammed with desperate protests that were full of secrets. Simon knew about the senses – but Megan didn’t. Neither of them knew about the soul bond.

Jim rubbed at his face with his hands, and then drew himself up. “The thing is, Simon, Blair and I…. We just recently found out that we’re soul mates.”

Simon choked on his beer. Megan gasped and squealed, but any further commentary was forbidden by a palm-outward gesture from Simon. He took a deep breath and said, “Explain.”

“It’s complicated. Sir.”

“You’ve been living in the same apartment for three years. How did you not figure this out before now?”

Jim looked increasingly hunted. “Like I said. It’s complicated.”

“When, Sandy? When did you find out?” Megan looked stunningly starry-eyed. The woman was a romantic, Blair thought. He would never have guessed.

“Like Jim said. It’s recent. Very recent, and we’re still a little overwhelmed, and then there’s the case.”

“No wonder you didn’t want him leaving you behind. I’m surprised he could do it.” 

Megan glared at Jim, and Blair hastily said “It was a near run thing, and these are unusual circumstances.”

“So you see, sir…,” Jim continued awkwardly. “By the usual protocols, either Blair should be with me, or I should return to Cascade with him.”

“You came here without him,” Simon said in heavy, displeased confusion.

“Yes, sir. But I’m starting to think that was a mistake.”

“Really?” Blair asked, genuinely surprised.

“Really,” Jim said, with a gentle smile.

That, of course, had to be the moment when that damn armoured car came roaring down the beach front and they ran for their lives.  
***  
Megan and Simon slept on the pews towards the front of the church, but Blair had made an untidy nest with a blanket and some of his clothes in the aisle against the far wall. He gestured that Jim join him, something that Jim did with no complaint but little conversation either.

“Try and get some sleep, Chief. You need your rest.”

“Maybe.” Blair yawned. “Okay, definitely,” he said at Jim’s look. “You’re okay? With the big reveal, I mean?”

“People are going to have to know, and Simon’s a friend as well as my boss. He’s a good place to start.”

“What about your father? Steven?” 

“They’ll deal with it, and if they don’t, screw them.”

“Jim? Are you okay? Overall, I mean? Still feeling… kind of crazy? Connected to Alex?”

“Yeah.” Jim sat silent a moment before he added, “It’s distracting. Weird.” He tugged gently at Blair’s messy hair. “Better with you here. I guess your instinct was the right one.”

“Good. Good.” Jim stayed sitting, his back against the wall and the long legs sprawled out into the aisle, but Blair lay down on the hard floor comfortingly aware that it was Jim – right there, right next to him, and happy with Blair’s presence. “When we get back, do you want to keep this private or go public?”

“You just want to add to your weird jewellery collection,” Jim said fondly. His voice grew serious. “But maybe a wristband that actually meant something could be a good idea. My left, your right. You never wear a watch anyway.”

“Bands would be nice,” Blair said, and dropped off into sleep. He woke with a chill uncertainty in his heart, to find himself alone. He scrambled to his feet, unsure how long his friend had been gone, hoping that the sentinel visions hadn’t led Jim too far ahead. To his relief he found Jim leaning drunkenly against the side of the church when he stepped out the door. His head was bowed and his fists were clenched.

“Jim? What’s going on, man?”

“I keep seeing her. I keep seeing her, but it’s… it’s all wrong. She tried to kill you; I shouldn’t be feeling like this.”

“Feeling like what?” Blair asked softly, not wanting to disturb Simon and Megan. There was a small yard around the church – a paved path, a tall tree by the boundary fence, some trimmed shrubs. Blair pushed Jim in the direction of the shadows under the tree. 

Jim went with barely a hint of resistance, but not before he said, “Like I want her.”

It was lucky that Simon and Megan were tired. It was lucky that apparently nobody was nearby because Blair’s sharp “Want her?” was way too loud. “What the hell do you mean, want her?” he managed to say more softly.

Jim had sunk to sit on the ground with his back to the trunk of the tree. “I mean the horizontal mambo, Sandburg, what else would I mean?”

“That’s not funny,” Blair hissed, crouching down beside Jim.

“I’m not joking,” was all Jim said, drawing his knees up. “I keep seeing her. Us. And she sees it too.”

“But you’re mine.” It was bewilderment, pure and simple in the first moment, but fierce resentment burned underneath it. It was a heat that prompted Blair to lean on one knee to get closer to Jim, to cup his face within Blair’s hands. 

Jim made no verbal answer, but he covered Blair’s hands with his own and tilted his face to press a kiss on Blair’s left palm. Then he stood, still and… listening? Seeing something perceptible only to him? “Come on,” he said, and taking Blair’s hand in his Jim set off at a run. Blair almost stumbled in the first step or two before he caught the rhythm of the pace and they could run together.

They slowed as they came to the beach, which was good because Blair’s chest hurt and he was fighting the urge to cough. The dawn set a pink tinge on the sand, a warm and sensuous glow freshened by the coolness of the early morning breeze. 

“There she is,” Jim said. There she was indeed, running up the beach towards them. Towards Jim anyway. She was athletic and beautiful, and the hair rose on Blair’s neck as if at the sight of a monster. Her pace slowed, and she waited some distance away from them. It was hard for Blair to read her face in the low light, but Jim presumably had no such difficulty. He gently disengaged his hand from Blair’s (that was hard; Blair’s urge was to grip Jim’s wrist with a manacled hold) and jogged the few yards down the beach until they stood facing each other. Their voices carried easily, and Blair eased himself a little closer to the pair.

“I’m here,” Jim said.

Alex glanced beyond him to Blair. Her face was utterly confused, and she took a few steps closer to Jim.

“You see what I see – it’s for us, not for him.”

“Alex…” 

Her hands reached out and Jim met them with his own, palm to palm, fingers entwined, and they stared at each other as if nothing else existed. Alex tilted her head forward as if she would kiss Jim, and Blair made a sharp, wordless protest. Jim never looked at him, but he shook his head.

“No. No.” He did look behind him then, at Blair standing alone and baffled and halfway to rage, before turning back to Alex. “He carries my mark. I carry his.”

Alex’s “No!” was like Blair’s denial of the attempted kiss.

“Alex, I can help you. We can do this together.”

‘Do what together!’ Blair nearly shouted. 

Alex backed away. “This is crazy,” she said and ran.

Blair sprang forward and shook Jim’s shoulder. “She’s getting away! Jim, you have to stop her.”

Jim only shook his head and watched her go.

“So, okay. You come all the way to Mexico to catch her, and this happens?” Alex was a sentinel, like Jim. Maybe she could hear Blair and his outrage or maybe she was too lost inside this craziness for it to register. 

Jim shook his head again, this time like someone trying to clear their mind, and looked at Blair helplessly. “I couldn’t stop her. It was like something was holding me back.”

“Something from your visions?”

“Maybe. Almost, but not quite.”

“Almost but not quite… Alex looked like she wanted to kiss you. That _was_ in your visions? The two of you together?”

Jim’s silence was answer enough. Blair stared out over the gentle swell of the sea and told himself that the reflected light from the early morning sun was what made his eyes sting. “Sentinels might have been more common in the past, but they still weren’t common. Survival might encourage certain codes of behaviour…” His voice dropped away.

“Are you telling me that this is some sort of primitive mating instinct?” Blair shrugged. “Because soul marks jerk us all around plenty enough without my senses getting into the game too. I have to get a handle on this, and you have to help me. This is supposed to be your area!”

“This is well beyond my area of research, Jim. This is a door into a beyond that I don’t get, that I can’t see past, and we’re winging it here. I think you two are being drawn home somehow. That’s the best I can figure.”

“Okay, fine.” Which it clearly was not.

They walked back to the church with Jim’s arm slung over Blair’s shoulder, more like Blair was a walking aid than in affection. They didn’t speak; Jim still seemed disoriented, and Blair was considering something that he’d never considered before – that Jim’s sentinel gifts could separate them, make Jim want something that neither he nor Blair could accept. Where was space for their newly discovered bond in that?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This stops being pre-slash here and turns into good old fashioned slash. Blair made it clear that he wasn't having it any other way, and I doubt that my readership will mind.

“Alex,” Jim pleaded. “There are other answers.” He took her in his arms, and Blair bowed his head and shut his eyes and wished that his hands were free so that he could cover his ears as well. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to hear. There was quiet for a few moments, punctuated by Megan making a noise that Blair tried to ignore – anger, disgust, he wasn’t sure. 

Blair’s misery was broken into by Alex’s cries of distress, and Blair lifted his head to see Jim laying her down on the side of one of the troughs. She cried out a few times more, and then subsided into silence. Jim spoke softly to her, and stroked her hair, but she didn’t respond.

“Hey, Ellison,” Megan called. “You were interrupted in the middle of something.” She shrugged her shoulder to indicate her still bound hands.

“Yeah, Jim. A little help here.”

Jim looked back at them, and then nodded and stood. He came down from the stone dais and undid Megan’s ties and then Blair’s.

“Connor,” he said, “you and I have some trash to take out.” He indicated Arguillo with a jerk of his head, and Megan nodded in her turn.

“You went to all the trouble of stopping them from killing anyone. It’d be a shame to waste it,” she said, and retrieved Arguillo’s gun for herself. “Nice,” she commented as she lifted it.

Jim put a hand on Blair’s shoulder. “You’re okay?”

Blair nodded, even though he wasn’t. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think Alex will give you any trouble. Watch her while Connor and I make sure that these guys don’t give us trouble either.”

“Go do what you have to,” Blair said tiredly and walked up the steps to lean against the wall a fair distance from Alex. She lay still, her eyes staring upwards at the ceiling, blinking now and again. It remained her only movement until Jim returned and gently lifted her down from the side of the trough to place her on the floor. 

“Good idea,” Blair said. “We wouldn’t want her to fall into the water and drown or anything.”

Jim stood at that and turned to face Blair, looking him in the face for almost the first time since Blair and Megan had entered the temple. “That’s not worthy of you, Sandburg.”

“Well, how about you tell me what is worthy of me? Having you not run out on me and Megan so you could come here and commune with another sentinel?” Blair’s throat hurt with the effort of not shouting – but he didn’t want Megan having any knowledge of this conversation. Bad enough that she’d figured out that Jim was a sentinel.

“Incacha told me to come here alone.”

“So I should blame the dead guy?”

“No, of course not.” Jim stalked towards Blair, but the impression of threat was undercut by him stumbling after a step or two.

“Whoa!” Blair exclaimed, and rushed to steady Jim. He was panicky suddenly, remembering Jim’s sensitivities to drugs. Jim had barely touched the VX canister, but who knew how that might have affected him. “Are you okay? Jim, was it the VX? Do you think it’s the VX?”

“Calm down. Alex drugged me, and I’m tired and this has been one hell of a day.” Jim tried to look both assured and reassuring, with limited success at both. “I’m okay. Just tired.”

“Alex… drugged you. Like that’s supposed to be okay when she probably took the same stuff and she’s lying there catatonic! Come and sit down.” Blair pivoted them both so that Jim’s back was to the wall. “Come on, sit down.” Jim sank down, and Blair realised that his clothes were heavily damp. “Did she put you in that trough as well?”

Jim nodded. “Yeah. I wasn’t sharing her vision fast enough for her.”

Some of Blair’s hurt subsided, if not his anxiety. “Oh my god… Jim, you do feel okay, right?”

“Sit down with me here. I’m fine, Sandburg. I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m tired; that’s all.”

Blair sagged against the wall himself and let himself crowd Jim’s space so that they sat shoulder, hip and thigh pressed together. Alex lay in their line of sight like a skeleton at the feast. Here Blair was with his sentinel and soul mate, in a temple of sentinel lore, and there was the woman who’d upended a good chunk of Blair’s hypotheses and, not at all incidentally, tried to murder him.

“Oh, this is so weird,” he muttered.

Jim sat self-contained, his hands in his lap, but his weight leaned into Blair’s anyway. “Tell me about it.” His head lifted in an attentive, familiar pose. “I can hear a helicopter coming.” He stood and hesitated a moment before he offered his hand to Blair. Blair took it and Jim hauled him to his feet. “Let’s go see if Simon has brought the cavalry or if we need to make a last stand again.” 

Blair watched Jim steel himself against his hope it was Simon. That was Jim, readying them both for the worst, and Blair gripped his hand more tightly and tried to joke. “It can’t have been a last stand if we’re doing it again.”

Jim grinned at that. “I said I was tired. You want a sensible metaphor from me now?”

“If you’re too tired to be sensible it had better be Simon. But I can make last stands with you any time.”

Jim looked away at that, unexpectedly shy, before he nodded. “Good. Let’s hope this isn’t one of them.” He stood a little taller and led them outside, where Megan turned excitedly to them. 

“I think I can hear a helicopter,” she said.

It was Simon and reinforcements from the national police. No last stands required.

***

They had a different hotel room in Sierra Verde after leaving the jungle temple, one that they returned to very late in the evening after nodding at the two Mexican law enforcement agents patrolling their door and hallway.

“That was some day, huh?” Blair commented as Jim shut the door.

“You could say that.” Jim laid his bag down on the bed and then stared at it like he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

“And you’re not any less tired, are you?” Blair asked.

“No, but I bet you could say the same.”

“I could. I’m going to go shower.”

Jim waved him on, and Blair washed off the day’s sweat as quickly as he could. Jim must need a shower too far more than he did. He hastily pulled on underwear and a tank top before entering the main room once more. “It’s all yours,” he said and dropped onto the bed while Jim took his own shower. Lying there, listening to the sound of water and the background noises of the hotel, he knew that he’d washed away the dirt, but not the events of the day. Without the distraction of dealing with the aftermath of their rescue everything crashed together in his head: the shared vision with Jim from the fountain and exchange of marks; Jim and Alex’s shared experience; the temple that Blair burned to have a chance at investigating in depth. He was exhausted, but wired and twitchy too.

Jim came out dressed only in a towel, which shoved Blair’s memories back to the discovery of their marks – a discovery barely days old.

“Forgot my damn shorts,” Jim muttered, and then stopped searching through his bag as Blair stared at him. They were both exhausted, Blair could feel it down to his bones and heavy in his lungs, but he rose from the bed and walked to Jim and put his hands on bare, slightly damp skin and kissed everything within reach – chest, shoulders, collar bone, Jim’s jaw, Jim’s mouth. He pushed Jim onto the bed, peeling the towel away as soon as they were lying down. Jim’s hands were hot, shifting Blair’s freshly put-on clothes so that they could be utterly skin to skin as well as breath to breath.

Was he pressing Jim down into the bed or was Jim clamped around him and pulling him down? It didn’t matter. Blair rode out the storm of sensation – his own pleasure and Jim’s shuddering orgasm caught under Blair’s weight, until they lay quietly together in a knot of limbs and sticky skin.

“Feel better, Chief?”

Blair knew a moment’s misgiving. That had been, even by his standards, a notably spontaneous (instinctual) sexual approach, and he lifted himself, astride across Jim’s body to look down into his face.

What he saw… he saw Jim loose and beautifully calm beneath him, a glow on his skin and a light in his eyes that made Blair catch his breath.

“Yes,” he declared, maybe a little too emphatically, but who wouldn’t be emphatic seeing what he could see and knowing that he’d put that peace in Jim and that look in his eyes. “Yes, I feel a lot better.”

“Good.” It occurred to Blair that after what must have been weeks of stress, of being dragged along by incomprehensible feelings like a fish with a hook in its jaw, that maybe Jim had needed what had happened just as much as Blair; not so much the release of sex itself, but the reminder that he and Blair were a unit - united, belonging together.

He leaned down and pecked between Jim’s eyebrows. “So much for our showers,” he said. “I’ll get a couple of wash-cloths.” He went to the bathroom. When he came back, Jim had spent those few moments straightening the bed and pulling back the covers for them both. He straightened, naked and oh so beautiful to Blair, and his, surely Jim was his alone, now that Alex was lost and wandering. He handed a wash-cloth to Jim, and brushed the leaping wolf on Jim’s hip with the back of a finger.

Jim cleaned himself, and tidy as always, took his wash-cloth and Blair’s back to the bathroom. When he came back he said, “This has been hard on you, in all sorts of ways. I’m sorry, Sandburg.”

“How come I’m Sandburg when you’re apologising?”

Jim flushed at that. “I’m sorry whether you’re Sandburg or Blair or whoever. It hasn’t exactly been a fun ride.”

He looked distressed and chagrined both, and Blair tried to soothe that insecure anger in himself. Jim didn’t apologise easily, and Blair sat down and tugged at Jim’s hand to indicate he join him. If they sat, Blair on the left, Jim on the right, with their marks facing as they had in Blair’s vision, that was entirely on purpose. 

“It was scary for both of us. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. We were both out of our depth.”

Jim bowed his head. “Yeah, I was out of my depth all right.”

“You were being called home some way, both of you, to do… whatever sentinels do. The troughs, the drugs – it’s fascinating but...”

“I was terrified, Chief. I figured my charming demeanour would have given that away. When I was in that trough – for a while there it was like it was all laid out, all the answers, but most of it’s gone now. But I remember one thing – Incacha said something about light coming from within, and I saw your face.”

“Really? Me?”

“Don’t look so surprised that you’re important to me, especially when we have destiny’s official seal of approval.”

Blair’s relief at those blunt words felt so much more naked than the simple skin that he sat in.

Jim continued. “We were being called, Alex and me, sure. But you have to want what you’re being called to, and this,” – his hands cupped Blair’s face – “this is a calling I could answer yes to, okay?”

“Okay,” Blair said, and draped his arms across Jim’s shoulders and let Jim hold him tight.


End file.
